Leaders of the European Union have much to decide over the next two days at their summit in Amsterdam. The political earthquake in France has changed the shape of politics in the EU, casting new uncertainty over economic and monetary union. It needs to be dispelled at this meeting if confidence in the EMU project is to be maintained. And there is still a lot to be negotiated during this end game of the Inter Governmental Conference that has been reviewing the treaties. Complex issues are at stake and the conclusions reached will shape European politics for years to come.
The indications last night were that a deal will be done on EMU sufficient to reassure the new French government that employment, growth and economic coordination can be restored to due prominence in the EU's priorities. Anything less would lose Mr Lionel Jospin face with a French electorate impatient to see an end to austerity policies and wishing to have economic policies at the European level reflecting their own concerns. His victory, together with that of Mr Blair in Britain, has altered the EU's political balance in such a way as to make this more likely. How ever anodyne the agreement reached on the matter in Amsterdam, the autumn should see more activity, including a special summit meeting on employment and the reopening of discussion on trans European networks.
In itself that is a good thing from the point of view of Irish interests. This State has normally benefited disproportionately from such initiatives over the course of its first generation of EU membership. The next generation is likely to be shaped profoundly by the agreements reached at this meeting. There are four main issues to be decided. Decisions will be made on representation of memberstates on the European Commission, on the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers and on new EU competences in certain areas. The Government's main concern will be to preserve its Commission seat and to minimise the loss of influence involved in the final tradeoff. The second main issue concerns flexibility in future decision making the extent to which groups of states will be permitted to proceed with integration initiatives faster than others. Mishandled, this has the potential to marginalise reluctant states in the longer term.
Why that should be so is evident in the third and fourth agenda items closer integration of justice and home affairs (notably in the freer movement of peoples using the Schengen accords) and in greater foreign policy, security and defence cooperation. Ireland is outside the mainstream in both these respects on Schengen to protect the free movement arrangements with the UK and on defence policy because of our military neutrality.
This IGC was intended to prepare the Union for enlargement to nearly double its present size by streamlining its structures and decisionmaking. Perhaps inevitably the level of ambition has been scaled back in line with political difficulties in the main memberstates and the overwhelming need to concentrate on EMU in recent months. There has also been a political failure to engage public attention and concern with a complex agenda and a political process still dominated by interstate treaty making procedures rather than constitution writing ones, despite rather greater openness, accessibility and more public lobbying. These political shortcomings must not, however, obscure the importance of the Amsterdam Council, whose decisions will be presented unalterably to the public for ratification in the coming year.